Page 62 of The Saloon Girl's Only Shot

“I like sleeping with you,” she murmured, cringing slightly at making that admission.

“Ah, Temperance, don’t tempt me,” he chided in a soft rumble. “I spend enough time thinking about how it would feel to have you under me.”

“I think about that too,” she said with a pang of helplessness, throwing her arm over her eyes, soaked in iniquitous knowledge. “And this is why I’m sure I’m ruined. He made me into a harlot. I wasn’t like this before, you know. Not even with him, but now I wonder all the time how it would feel to be with you.”

“You’re not a harlot. Temperance.” His arm reached out, and he dragged her into him. His leg slid across her, pinning her deeper into the mattress. “Do you feel this way about all men? Does Elmer make you feel this way? What about Fritz?”

“No,” she said truculently, trying to resist the urge to melt into him.

“Well, as nice as Jane is, I don’t want her in this bed. What’s going on here is between you and me. The only reason it’s wrong that we’re feeling this way is because I’ve hired you, not because there’s anything we need to be ashamed of. I’ve tried to be as clear as I can about not wanting to marry, so that’s another reason I won’t make love to you.”

But you can if you want to, she nearly said. Her body was saying it. Her arm curled around his waist, and she turned her face into his shoulder so she could feel the heat and strength there. So she could breathe in the smell of winter air and pitch from the wood he’d brought in before bed and the tang that was purely him.

He breathed a small curse and his chin dipped. His nose grazed her brow, her cheek found his jaw, then their lips found each other, parted, and fit. Sealed. Clung.

A soft moan resounded in her throat. His hand came to her hair, and his thumb stroked her temple and outlined the shell of her ear. He shifted more fully atop her, and his hips settled more heavily onto her own.

This was what had been keeping her awake, and now she indulged some of those fantasies. Her arms wrapped around him and found their way up and down his back, learning the planes of his shoulder blades, the valley of his spine, and the firm muscles that flexed in his back.

“What do you want?” he asked on a hot breath that pooled into her neck. His lips nuzzled under her chin and down to her collarbone. “I don’t have a skin. I can’t fuck you, but I want to feel you. Can I?” He took hold of her skirt and lifted himself off it, starting to draw it upward.

“Yes,” she whispered back, helping push the cotton out of the way then giving in to curiosity and searching out the shape of him through his drawers.

The hiss of his breath going in was such a shaken sound, she smiled into the dark.

“You don’t mind?” she asked, half-laughing.

His answer was a gratified noise that was more of a growl deep in his chest. His mouth came back to hers. He plundered her mouth with his own while she shaped and squeezed him.

All of her grew hot. She was tangled in clothing and bedding, trying to find the slit in his drawers to touch his naked erection while his own palm climbed the inside of her thigh, sending runnels of heat into the notch at the top. He covered her mound and flexed his wide palm against the thin layer of muslin.

Lightning seemed to strike into her loins. As a small sob escaped her. He murmured, “Mmhmm,” as if he knew he had just undone her with that simple act of claiming.

They shifted and searched. He leaned away to open his drawers, then brought her hand to the heft of his hard, naked cock. It twitched in her fisted grip.

His mouth found hers, his teeth scraped lightly across her parted lips, and when his hand burrowed past the slit in her drawers, he proved Dewey to be an absolute amateur when it came to seduction. Owen’s touch tickled along her seam a few times, enough to stir the hairs and cause a rush of wet heat to flood into her folds. Her mons felt heavy and swollen and a distinct throbbing began like a pin prick at the apex of her sex.

While his tongue plunged into her mouth, seeking her own, his fingertip delicately parted her, found her slick juices and skated them all around. Her flesh flowered with hungry yearning. She had no sense of what she was doing to him. She could only hold him tightly while he moved in her grip. Her world had shrunk to the way he was lazily working two fingertips up and down, teasing the peak and plunging further into her valley each time he returned.

“Owen,” she moaned when he gave her a chance to breathe.

“No?”

“Yes. Please.”

With another growling noise, he gave her the full length of his finger, deep into her channel.

She kissed him harder. Squeezed him tighter.

His touch left her, then returned, bigger. Two fingers. Snug, but oh it caused everything to feel that much more intense. He tucked his fingers deep into her, setting the heel of his palm flush against that place that pulsed with such longing.

She couldn’t help moving against his hand in the same way he was thrusting into hers, all while kissing him flagrantly. Offering her tongue and enticing him to suck it. The tip of his cock was leaking fluid, making his cock slide in her grip while her own body grew hotter and slicker and wetter and needier.

This wasn’t the tantalizing, tickling, beckoning sensation she’d felt in the past. This was far more intense. Her whole body was one live nerve ending, feeling tight and taut and tense, but wallowing in the sensations at the same time. She liked the steel of his shape pushing into her hand and the strength of the arm that kept her caged beneath him. She was hot and her hair was pinned, and she couldn’t open her legs far enough, but she didn’t want any of this to end. She drank in his scent and moaned louder. The ropes strained with their movements as they increased their writhing. The whole bed was creaking.

“I’m going to come,” he said, catching at her earlobe with his teeth. He shifted his touch, so his thumb circled that place that had been trapped under the friction of his palm.

Suddenly her inner flesh clamped onto his.